Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer • Hacker News Board

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#181

Post by tedivm » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 1:17 PM UTC

somenits wrote: post #158

FireBeyond wrote: post #5

Apropos of anything else, J&J's handling of this has been despicable. Creating an entity specifically to pick up all of the related liabilities, picking up those liabilities and then (exact count may be wrong, but it's very close) literally filing for bankruptcy within the space of three days. The Texas two-step, as it's called. > In 2021, the company spun off its liabilities into a new entity called LTL Management u…

This is the top-voted comment but as many of the other replies have pointed out, it's totally wrong outrage-bait. J&J, the parent company, is still ultimately liable for the full amount. The bankruptcy process just allows the courts to manage all of the claims together under the authority of one judge, instead of having different courts in every state issue incompatible damages awards in a race to judgment.

They're only liable for the full amount because a judge refused to let them go through with the plan. Just because they failed to enact their plan doesn't mean the plan didn't exist.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/jjs-ltl-units-bankruptcy-dismi...

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#182

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 1:21 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #134

notimetorelax wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business limited its exposure through the spinoff. J&J as an entity may need to seize to exist to pay back for the damages.

Minor tip: “cease to exist” is the phrase you almost surely intended.

True but given the context of J&J's SLAPP suit the verbatim has potential.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#183

Post by euix » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 1:21 PM UTC

codelord wrote: post #103

As someone who did a PhD and published and read many papers (in ML) I believe vast majority of papers in ML are misleading. If in fact every paper that claims a better performance over state of the art was true we would have solved AI by now. You see all sorts of problems when you dig deeper into the technical details of peer reviewed publications (even in top tier conferences) including misleading baselines, statist…

I don't know if you looked into pursuing academic career and running the post-doc circuit (maybe that doesn't happen in ML) but academia is ultimately a business and academics are overwhelming pressured to publish and increase the stats.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#184

Post by scarface_74 » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 1:23 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #176

scarface_74 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"Hmm, you raise systemic concerns yet you use the system because you live in a society enmeshed in it" is not a winning argument.

Well, they could always commit their time and a large portion of their resources to a non profit.

I bet you dollars to donuts that they work in tech and not for a non profit.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#185

Post by boringg » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 1:25 PM UTC

wiz21c wrote: post #177

somenits wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the top-voted comment but as many of the other replies have pointed out, it's totally wrong outrage-bait. J&J, the parent company, is still ultimately liable for the full amount. The bankruptcy process just allows the courts to manage all of the claims together under the authority of one judge, instead of having different courts in every state issue incompatible damages awards in a race to judgment.

and then it may be easier to convince one judge than a dozen. Isn't it ?

Potentially but it's also a waste of our judicial system resources to have 12 identical cases going at the same time. However if you like paying for legal admin fees on both side its a great way to make sure lawyers get paid.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#186

Post by eropple » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 1:26 PM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #184

eropple wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hmm, you raise systemic concerns yet you use the system because you live in a society enmeshed in it" is not a winning argument.

Well, they could always commit their time and a large portion of their resources to a non profit. I bet you dollars to donuts that they work in tech and not for a non profit.

"Well they could do things to harm themselves [because we treat non-profit employees like they implicitly have a wealthy spouse or should live in a shoebox]" is also not helping the argument very much.

One does not need to be a Stylite to have an opinion on society; comparing the actions of individuals, without significant power or influence, with corporate-fiction persons that come equipped with lobbying arms and sufficiently dispersed decision-making power that nasty shit comes out of them regularly, is not and never persuasive.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#187

Post by andsoitis » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #71

nl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having read the Matt Levine piece linked below ( https://archive.is/KcL2P ) I think that J&J did the right thing by attempting to use bankruptcy to organize payments. It was not avoiding liability at all. The court that dismissed the claim in general agreed with J&J's process, but said it was too early. Some key quote from Levine: > Juries in the US don’t like it when companies make products that kill people, and the…

"Not running out of money to pay people fairly"? $65BN is almost exactly equal to one year's gross profits for the company, on top of which J&J has $24BN in cash and a market valuation of over $400BN. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/JNJ/key-statistics/ That $65BN is likely decades worth of claims, not one lump sum being demanded at once. Assuming the claims are spread out over just one decade, the settlement costs wo…

You should base your projection on net profits, not gross, given that these would be additional expenses (not considering tax effect).

Johnson & Johnson net income for the twelve months ending March 31, 2023 was $12.724B, a 35.83% decline year-over-year. Johnson & Johnson annual net income for 2022 was $17.941B, a 14.07% decline from 2021. Johnson & Johnson annual net income for 2021 was $20.878B, a 41.89% increase from 2020.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JNJ/johnson-johnso...

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#188

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 1:31 PM UTC

dev_tty01 wrote: post #161

onlypositive wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather see J&J go out of business entirely.

I get the sentiment, but if I stop and think about it, I don't understand the math. I'm not intending to criticize since I struggle with this myself. Try on this hypothetical. Imagine that ten people in a giant company called ACME made some decisions that led to 50,000 people getting hurt. ACME also employs 100,000 hard working people, representing perhaps 0.3-0.4 million family members dependent upon that income. Im…

[deleted]

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#189

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 1:32 PM UTC

fennecfoxy wrote: post #175

FireBeyond wrote: post #5

Apropos of anything else, J&J's handling of this has been despicable. Creating an entity specifically to pick up all of the related liabilities, picking up those liabilities and then (exact count may be wrong, but it's very close) literally filing for bankruptcy within the space of three days. The Texas two-step, as it's called. > In 2021, the company spun off its liabilities into a new entity called LTL Management u…

Well the fact that that is possible is just a reflection of most of the things wrong with the world. The rich get richer.

[deleted]

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#190

Post by tiahura » Mon, Jul 17, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

mmusson wrote: post #149

autoexec wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The basic idea of bankruptcy is that if you have a company with $1,000 of assets and $2,000 of liabilities, you can’t pay back everyone everything you owe them. You could just pay back the first creditors who show up and ask for their money back, until the $1,000 is gone, and then give the remaining creditors zero, but that seems unfair I'm entirely unconvinced that J&J couldn't pay back everything they owe, to eve…

I was a juror on a very small case. A previous trial assigned guilt. Our trial was to determine damages. It was eye opening for me. We were not allowed to know things like medical bills and costs the victim incurred. We were forced to choose some number without having an basis for establishing the magnitude. I still don’t know if we were too high or too low.

Ambulance chaser here. The most common reasons I don’t offer evidence of bills in a trial are that Medicaid paid the bill for pennies on the dollar, or the hospital wrote off the bills.

In many jurisdictions, if the Plaintiff chooses to introduce evidence of bills, they can only submit the amount still owed or actually paid to satisfy the bill, and the amount that was written off or contractually adjusted stays out.

Often, Medicaid may pay $700 on a $15,000 bill. Since the size of the bills tend to frame the non-economic damages (pain & suffering) awarded by juries, Plaintiffs’ attorneys don’t want small bill numbers to influence the juries into a minimal award. So, they just don’t introduce evidence of bills and hope that juries assume big bills or base their award on something else.